LOUISVILLE -- Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems, based in Louisville, has turned to venerable aerospace firm Lockheed Martin to help it construct the next-generation Dream Chaser spacecraft that could soon ferry American astronauts into space.

Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. will be in charge of building the composite structure for the Dream Chaser, the spacecraft Sierra Nevada has been designing and building for NASA's commercial crew program.

Sierra Nevada, which has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars from NASA over the last few years to develop the Dream Chaser, will work with the space agency toward gaining government certification of the vehicle.

Company officials announced the partnership Wednesday.

Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, said at a news conference that Lockheed will help Sierra Nevada produce the "safest spacecraft ever built" and inject vitality into a U.S. space program that has receded since the space shuttle was retired by NASA in 2011.

He declined to put a dollar figure on the value of the partnership, other than to say that it was a "multi-million dollar, long-term" deal.

"There are a lot of smart people who know what they're doing, and we want them on our team," Sirangelo said to a gathering that included the Louisville mayor and other local and industry officials. "We're going to combine our knowledge. We should do whatever we can do to get Americans flying into space on American spacecraft."

Since NASA retired the space shuttle program, American astronauts have had to pay $60 million or so for a seat on the Russian Soyuz space capsule in order to reach the International Space Station.

"That's just not the way we want to do it," Sirangelo said.

'Deep knowledge of composites'

Sierra Nevada cited Lockheed Martin's "extensive experience" building composite structures for spacecraft and high-performance aircraft as the primary reason for choosing the firm, which it selected through a competitive bidding process.

Louisville-based Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft during a captive-carry test performed in May at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield. (7News Denver)

Lockheed has experience developing NASA's Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which is being designed to take American astronauts on a variety of missions, including ones to deep space.

"We have a deep knowledge of composites," said Jim Crocker, Lockheed's vice president and general manager of civil space. "We're leveraging materials we already had in stock."

Lockheed will do the bulk of its work on Dream Chaser at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The shell it builds will be fitted on the next iteration of the Dream Chaser vehicle, which will be a piloted flight test vehicle that could make its first orbital journey in late 2015 or early 2016.

A fully operational orbital flight would likely occur a year later.

First, the company needs to test its engineering prototype, which was swarmed Wednesday by blue-shirted Sierra Nevada workers in preparation for its shipment out to Edwards Air Force Base in two weeks for a series of drop tests.

The tests, in which the spacecraft will be released from a helicopter at 12,000 feet above ground and land wheels down on a runway, are scheduled to be completed by April.

Former astronaut Jim Voss, the Dream Chaser program manager and an instructor at the University of Colorado, said the vehicle has so far reached 21 milestones and is on schedule and under budget.

The seven-person vehicle, which is 40 feet long and 25 feet wide, is the only spacecraft in the commercial space industry that would be capable of landing on a runway upon its return to Earth. The competing vehicles under development are capsules.

The Dream Chaser would launch on an Atlas V rocket, being built by Centennial-based United Launch Alliance.

'It's anybody's race'

Sierra Nevada is up against some stiff competition in the commercial space sector, with California-based Space Exploration Technologies having already twice flown an unmanned space capsule to the International Space Station last year. During its last mission in October, SpaceX delivered ice cream to delighted astronauts at the space station.

"Sierra Nevada does a lot of work with satellites, but they've never built a vehicle," Simberg said. "Some people might have been nervous about them doing it themselves, and so partnering with a prime contractor that has more experience with these things should give them more comfort."

And that will help the company net more funding going forward, Simberg said.

"The takeaway is that they've bolstered their credibility with those handing out the money," he said.

Sierra Nevada landed $212.5 million from NASA in August, while SpaceX received $440 million and Boeing took in $460 million during the same round of funding. Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in Washington, D.C., said if that's an indication of the space agency's level of confidence in each company, Wednesday's announcement "affirms (Sierra Nevada's) place in the conversation."

He said the Sierra Nevada-Lockheed partnership will help the Dream Chaser in two main areas. First, Lockheed's experience with designing and using composite materials in space vehicles will be invaluable. And the company's track record getting NASA certification for spacecraft -- "an onerous, document-heavy process" -- will come in handy for Sierra Nevada.

"Having somebody like Lockheed, which has that experience, on your team is a good thing," Lopez-Alegria said.

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